Marvel & Netflix Have Found Their IRON FIST – But Some Not Happy

The final casting of Finn Jones, Loras Tyrell on HBO’s “Game of Thrones, as IRON FIST brings the full roster of Marvel & Netflix’s DEFENDERS to a close.

Finn will play Daniel Rand who is a practitioner of martial arts and the wielder of a mystical force known as the Iron Fist, which allows him to summon and focus his chi. It’s assumed he will first appear in the upcoming LUKE CAGE series this fall on Netflix and get his own series after that. In the comics Rand partnered with Cage many times.

All the individual series will culminate in a Defenders miniseries alongside Daredevil, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage.

Originally there was some speculation that an IRON FIST series wouldn’t happen since rumors had it they couldn’t “crack” the character to make it work for a series. I guess that happened when they brought in ‘Dexter’ EP Scott Buck as Showrunner.

*OH!!! BUT WAIT!* All are not happy about the casting… specifically it being a white, non-asian playing the part.

*First Point:* Yes, in the comics the character in a white, blond dude. That’s a fact and he was created in the 1970’s so no one should be surprised by that Marvel at the time wanted a white dude in the part.. although I think you’d need to talk to his creators, the legendary Roy Thomas and Gil Kane, to see if there was ever a question of him being asian.

Many people have been calling on Marvel and Netflix to push past that and cast an asian actor for the role for over a year.

Marvel writer Marjorie Liu has been pretty outspoken on the casting of Iron Fist. In December, she tweeted, “Let me be blunt: I won’t watch Iron Fist if they cast a white dude. I can’t do it anymore. I’ve reached my limit. Peace out.”

With Finn’s announcement she cranked it up and tweeted this:

She’s not alone, TheWrap.com collected a lot of comments and tweets on the subject including a great letter to Marvel from 1974 about this very subject.